Fake author real paper?

  Reading summary

  77 authors from 44 universities were found to be problem papers by academic counterfeiters. Many colleges and universities told the reporters of the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that they have launched an investigation.

  Some people not only plagiarized, but also fabricated foreign co-authors, copying them back and forth, and copying them even to believe in themselves—“They are more and more confident that their work should not be buried, so they also start citing their own problem papers. "

  A few years ago, a European mathematician published three papers in cooperation with Chinese counterparts. In one of them, he specifically pointed out that this research was completed during his visit to the Department of Mathematics of Columbia University in the United States. "Thank you very much. Hospitality".

  Until 2020, three papers were withdrawn by the journal, and "European mathematicians" also appeared in their original form-in addition to the suspected plagiarism and fraud in peer review, the retracted papers also have a common, non-existing corresponding author- Beatriz Ychussie, School of Mathematics, Roskilde University, Denmark.

  Roskilde University confirmed that the school did not have this scholar and could not get in touch with this person.

  Three papers involving two Chinese Author: Big Data Statistics Institute and lecturer at Henan University of Finance and Economics Yan Zhenhai, Henan University Associate Dean Li Zhiqiang.

  So far, these two scholars have not explained how they have "knowledged" the European mathematician who has not found this person.

  In response to an inquiry by a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily, Henan University of Economics and Law stated that it is investigating the matter and has preliminary opinions on Yan Zhenhai. Henan University also confirmed that Li Zhiqiang is being investigated by the school's research department.

  On June 15th, the academic counterfeiters Smut Clyde and Tiger BB8 (Chinese net name "Puppet Tiger"-reporter's note) published a report on a website that focuses on academic integrity: the International Mathematics Journal, A group of papers from China showed consistent traces of falsification, including problems with fictional foreign authors, fictional mathematical formulas, etc., and these problem papers frequently cited and copied each other. 65 papers have been found suspected of fraud-21 of which have been retracted.

  The so-called corresponding authors of the paper come from Japan, Thailand, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico and Australia. The 77 domestic authors signed in the paper are distributed in 44 universities, including key universities such as Central South University, Hunan University, Harbin Engineering University.

  "The fictional stories are almost exactly the same. They are the results of the research made by this foreign author during a short-term visit to a foreign university." Zuohu told the China Youth Daily · China Youth Network reporter that these fictional foreign authors are either signed units. It was announced that there was no such person, or there was no other work except for papers that "co-operated" with these Chinese authors.

  Among the 65 question papers, 14 are indicated by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and some are indicated by Heilongjiang, Sichuan, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and other provincial scientific funds.

  During the interview, it was found that some of the Chinese authors of these papers used the papers as academic achievements to apply for doctorate degrees, some were used to declare associate professor titles, and some were used to obtain scientific research awards.

No such person

  Yan Zhenhai was one of the first authors to be withdrawn. On February 4 this year, the mathematical journal Progress in Difference Equations announced the withdrawal of a 2015 paper under his name. The corresponding author of the thesis is Beatrice Yousi. At the time of submission, Yan Zhenhai was pursuing a doctorate in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Central South University, and another paper in the same period had a similar situation. A withdrawal statement issued by the mathematics journal "Fixed Point Theory and Application" on February 27 this year shows that a paper co-authored by Yan Zhenhai and Ikudol Miyamato, a scholar at Nagoya University, was withdrawn due to forged peer review and fictional authorship.

  In the same way, the paper claimed that the article was written by the corresponding author "as a visiting professor during a short stay at the Institute of Mathematics of Nagoya University", but Nagoya University denied Ikudol Miyamato's identity.

  Yan Zhenhai's two fake papers were published during his Ph.D. studies at Central South University. Long Yao, secretary of the Academic Committee of Central South University, told the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that the school’s academic committee dealt with Yan Zhenhai’s dismissal of his paper and determined that he was “academically irregular”. As for the disqualification of his doctoral degree after the manuscript is withdrawn, it needs to be investigated and handled by the degree-granting unit, the graduate school of the school.

  Li Zhiqiang’s three papers were retracted and published in 2015. In addition to Beatrice Yousi, the corresponding author of his “collaboration” is Mohamed Vetro of the School of Mathematics at the University of Ioannina, Greece. ), the identity of the latter was also denied by Ioannina University.

  Corresponding authors are the authors who are mainly responsible for contacting journals during the submission, peer review, and publication of the paper. They have added contact information such as e-mail addresses in the paper. They need to answer editorial questions in time and respond to peer comments on the paper in a timely manner. When the paper is questioned, the journal will ask the corresponding author to provide additional information.

  Among the 21 papers that have been retracted, the corresponding authors are no exceptions, and there is no response to the journal's email requesting withdrawal.

  The fictitious correspondence author's form of falsification surprises academic fraudsters as tigers. He analyzed that as a large number of Chinese authors' frauds have been revealed in recent years, adding a foreign collaborator to the paper, "even letting foreigners as correspondent authors", helps to circumvent the censorship of foreign journals.

  He believes that the purpose of fictitizing a foreign author may have two aspects. On the one hand, it is beneficial to the performance evaluation of domestic authors, and it can be advertised as "with international cooperation." On the other hand, adding a foreign author can make it easier for domestic authors to deal with colleagues. Questions like: "I usually don't see you doing this kind of work, why did you send such a deep English paper?"

  "He can say that he met such a foreigner, and then talked, and he produced such a paper. In a word, it is conducive to out of nothing to suddenly produce a seemingly impossible scientific research achievement." Zuohu said.

 Common source

  A comparison of two academic counterfeiters found that several early problem papers shared a common plagiarism "material", that is, several normal papers from 2012 to 2013. The counterfeiters have compiled at least six question papers, and these six papers have become follow-up plagiarism materials. "They are more and more confident that their work should not be buried, so they also start citing their own question papers."

  There were two main papers that were plagiarized early, one was a paper co-authored by Qiao Lei and Huang Jinjin in 2012, and the other was a paper co-authored by Qiao Lei, Gao Zhiqiang, and Deng Guantie.

  Qiao Lei is currently a professor at the School of Mathematics and Information Science, Henan University of Economics and Law. He received his Ph.D. from Beijing Normal University in 2010. Deng Guantie is his mentor at Beijing Normal University.

  Huang Jinjin comes from Zhoukou Normal University and collaborated with Qiao Lei in 2012. There are two question papers under Huang Jinjin's name, one of which has been retracted due to plagiarism and fiction.

  In addition, among the authors of the problem papers, Xue Gaixian and Zhao Tao from the School of Mathematics and Information Science of Henan University of Economics and Law, all of whom were involved in the papers and claimed to have received funding from the National Natural Science Foundation Project hosted by Qiao Lei. Retractions.

  A reporter from the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily found that Huang Jinjin and Xue Gaixian were both participants of the National Natural Science Foundation of China presided over by Qiao Lei. In the project division of labor, Huang Jinjin is responsible for "collecting and sorting materials" and Xue Gaixian is responsible for "gradual estimation".

  The reporter repeatedly tried to contact Qiao Lei by phone, but no one answered. Professor Deng Guantie previously said in reply to the media: "I don't know that my paper has been copied by others, and I don't know the fake things in the back. I am Qiao Lei's mentor, but I don't know what he cooperated with others to publish. "

  Among the 65 papers suspected of fraud, Henan University of Economics and Law accounted for 15 of them, involving 9 teachers and students from 4 colleges. Xia Yong, deputy director of the school’s party committee propaganda department, told the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that at present, the school is investigating and dealing with six or seven teachers involved, involving more papers and longer review time. There is no final processing result, it should be soon."

  The name of Sun Jianguo, deputy dean of the School of Computer Science of Harbin Engineering University, also appeared seven times in the report of academic counterfeiters, and two of his papers have been retracted. In 2015, Jianguo Sun as the first author published a paper on "Inequality and Application" which attracted the attention of counterfeiters. This paper was recognized by the journal as "highly similar" to Yan Zhenhai's retracted paper. The corresponding author of the article is He Binghang, a 2013 graduate student of the School of Mathematics, Jilin University, but the thesis asserts: "The article was written by the corresponding author when he was a visiting professor at the University of Delaware." Two National Natural Science Foundations chaired by Sun Jianguo The project, a special scientific research fund project of the doctoral subject of the Ministry of Education, is also listed in the question paper.

  The reporter contacted Sun Jianguo himself, and no reply was received as of press time. From July 7, Sun Jianguo’s teacher’s homepage on the official website of Harbin Engineering University has been deleted. The school's party committee propaganda department responded to the reporters of the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that the school quickly established a special working group on the related personnel involved in academic misconduct. After a preliminary investigation, it was found that there was an issue of academic misconduct. Fully verify the academic achievements published by the personnel involved, and deal with them in accordance with regulations and disciplines based on the results of the verification."

  Playing as a tiger suggested that the National Natural Science Foundation of China need to intervene in this investigation because it is not just a matter of funding. Even if they don’t actually use the National Natural Science Foundation, they also use the fund’s name as “stealing dogs and dogs”.

  In the past, when examining suspicious papers in the fields of biology and medicine, playing a tiger only needed to “go over” papers one by one on the screen, first glance at the pictures and charts without reading the text, and then look at the suspicious things. For mathematical papers, this technique does not work at all, you must study the content of the paper and the derivation process.

  They found that the abstracts, brief introductions and conclusions of these papers were well written and neat, but after careful reading and comparison, they found that "the intermediate derivation process may be messy." He once asked a famous school professor in the field of basic mathematics about the problem paper. The other party told him that except for some irregularities in some places, he could not see the problem at all, and recommended him to an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the field of applied mathematics. "Sure enough, the academician saw the paper sent immediately and said that the formula is wrong."

  Many papers were withdrawn because they were found to be highly duplicated with other journal papers. According to the results of the tracing, they belong to the papers under review during the same period. "In the beginning, I thought it was the reviewer who leaked the manuscript under review, so that others can quickly submit the article to other journals. However, once we saw another paper, we found that the content was the same suspicious and inferior." Said the tiger.

  In his view, this is a strategy to circumvent censorship: create two or more papers and submit articles to different journals at the same time. Even if the journal is checked, only the papers that have been published will be checked, and the papers that are accepted for review at the same time The paper is almost impossible to be found.

  In the similar paragraphs of these papers, even for different problems, the calculation process is almost exactly the same, and even the same error occurs. In a paper in 2014, the author of a reference was misspelled, and the error was copied to the five question papers in 2017. Playing as a tiger, they call this similarity "tribute similarity".

  Of the 65 papers, there are only 34 papers with the title of physicist Schrödinger in the title. It seems that these authors are particularly interested in Schrodinger's theory. Some authors have produced new problem papers simply by replacing the concepts of "Schrödingerean predator-prey system" and "the Schrödinger-prey operator".

  Academic counterfeit Clyde pointed out: "These documents inserted Schrodinger's name, not to thank him for his special contribution to physics and mathematics, but more like a talisman of power, using it as a shortcut to steal results."

 Lose money business?

  A reporter from the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily contacted more than 10 of the 77 domestic authors to try to understand the papers involved. Only one person was willing to talk about the publication process of the paper and requested anonymity.

  Zhang Lan (pseudonym) told reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that the corresponding author in his paper did have someone, but lost contact after the paper was retracted. He recalled that in 2016, he attended an academic conference in Hangzhou. After the meeting, he met Wang Miao (a pseudonym). Wang Miao claims to be a teacher and is engaged in research in mathematics. He is about to visit Thailand as a visiting scholar and shows him the opportunity to cooperate.

  Soon, Wang Miao called Zhang Lan and said that he has an SCI (American Science Citation Index) paper to be published, but the research funding is not enough, and there is no money to pay for the publication fee of the journal. As a corresponding author, he can get a scientific research award. Transfer the first author to Zhang Lan.

  "At that time, the SCI paper award seemed to be quite high. There are also these paper machines that rely on papers for bonuses. I think it's good to rub an author, so I didn't think so much." Zhang Lan told reporters that according to his understanding, in those years The scientific research unit has given great rewards to SCI papers. He has heard that there are many special SCI papers with "mixed" bonuses, so he has no doubts.

  The email screenshots provided by Zhang Lan show that Wang Miao said she was studying abroad and was inconvenient to call, and the two parties could only contact by email. After the first draft of the thesis was accepted by the editorial department of the journal, Wang Miao asked him to pay the publication fee of the thesis first. After several rounds of email communication, Zhang Lan symbolically polished the finished manuscript and paid a journal fee of more than 10,000 yuan.

  Wang Miao also pointed out that the paper is difficult to publish without the support of fund projects. To this end, Zhang Lan listed a National Natural Science Foundation project chaired by his tutor as a supporter of this paper. He also reimbursed the journal page fee through the funding of the project. "At that time, the project funds were left unfinished. I was thinking of spending the country's money anyway. It's a little bit to report."

  At the end of 2019, this paper was retracted. The school investigated him. At this time, Zhang Lan discovered that Wang Miao's mobile phone and email had been cancelled, and he could not be reached. He therefore suspected that Wang Miao was not a visiting scholar she claimed to be, but a liar who swindled the page fee.

  Zhang Lan told reporters: "The school has dealt with me in accordance with the law and regulations, and has given me a light punishment. The reimbursed money has also been refunded. At that time, I wanted to meet the introduction conditions of a unit before graduation. The benefits were not taken, and I was punished alive."

  "Like this kind of scammer, as long as various units always use papers as assessment or introduction conditions, there will always be." He said.

Repeated fraud

  The reporter noticed that in the papers suspected of fraud, the names of some authors appeared repeatedly, and the time span was very large. Playing as a tiger believes that some authors who have tasted the sweetness and repeatedly falsified it will have the consequence of "bad money expelling good money" in academia.

  From the record of the paper published, the research team of Wang Qiaofeng, a teacher of Zhejiang Quzhou Vocational and Technical College, and Huang Bin, a teacher of Quzhou College, is very "international". From 2015 to 2016, they published papers in cooperation with the University of Western Bohemia, Czech Republic, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2018, Wang Jiaofeng was appointed as an associate professor at Quzhou Vocational and Technical College. These papers have been retracted one after another this year.

  A staff member of the office of Quzhou Vocational and Technical College told the reporter of China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that Wang Jiaofeng published these papers for the purpose of assessing professional titles. The college has conducted investigation and processing and revoked her associate professor’s professional title. All honors will be recovered.

  Han Minghua, an associate professor at the School of Science of Guizhou Kaili University, was dismissed his paper during the Ph.D. study at the School of Mathematics and Econometrics, Hunan University due to suspected fraud. This thesis was included in his doctoral dissertation as an academic achievement during his studies, helping him meet the graduation requirements.

  In 2017, "Oncology Biology" withdrew 107 papers from China. According to the survey results of the Ministry of Science and Technology, 101 of them have issues of providing false peer review experts or false peer review opinions, of which 95 are provided by third-party institutions and provide false peer review experts or false peer review opinions, and 6 articles are provided by the authors themselves. Review experts or false peer review opinions. Of these 101 papers, 12 are "purchased from third-party organizations."

  Zuohu told reporters that many journals will allow authors to fill in the information and mailbox of the recommended reviewers. The counterfeiter made a fake reviewer and his mailbox, and made the editor mistakenly think that the paper was sent to a senior researcher in the industry, but it was actually sent to the contributor himself. Journal editors will receive positive review comments from reviewers. "Manipulating peer review is a common method in academic fraud in the past, and this trick is still very good."

  In February this year, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology "Several Opinions on Regulating the Use of Relevant Indicators for SCI Papers in Colleges and Universities to Establish a Correct Evaluation Orientation" pointed out that the relevant indicators of SCI papers have become academic evaluations, as well as job title evaluation, performance evaluation, talent evaluation, and subject evaluation The core indicators of resources, resource allocation, school rankings, etc. have led to the excessive pursuit of SCI paper-related indicators in scientific research in colleges and universities, and even the alienation phenomenon with the number of published SCI papers, high impact factor papers, and highly cited papers as the fundamental goal In addition, the problems of value pursuit distortion, impudent study style, and quick success.

  The two departments require all localities to standardize the use of indicators related to SCI papers in terms of subject and school assessments, professional title assessment and employment, and not to use them as labels for scientific research personnel, subject and university evaluations.

  Despite numerous disclosures of academic fraud, playing the tiger is also deeply inadequate to track down and lock up the "upstream industry" of paper fraud, and he hopes that relevant government departments will assume this responsibility. "These authors use taxpayer's money to investigate and deal with these unscrupulous businessmen. It is also what the government should do to safeguard the interests of taxpayers."

  The three papers published by Wang Jianjie, associate professor at the School of Applied Mathematics, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics from 2016 to 2018 are suspected of fraud. Corresponding authors are from Mosul University in Iraq, Kobanza University in Malaysia, and Berlin University of Technology in Germany. Among them, the first two articles have been withdrawn due to plagiarism, manipulation of peer review, and fictional authors. Another paper is still displayed as the main scientific research achievement on the college's official website. This is the result of his collaboration with Hugo Roncalver, and is the only record of Hugo Roncalver’s thesis published, according to the annotation, it is still Hugo Roncalf’s visiting professor in Berlin Industry "Written during a short stay at the Institute of Mathematics and Physics of the University", although the remote Berlin University of Technology knew nothing about it.

  China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Liu Yan Source: China Youth Daily